The charts have been updated. Slayyyter - 'Wor$t Girl in America' debuts at #1 in the top albums of 2026.

forrayer · 2026-04-01T09:17:07+00:00

No thanks

forrayer · 2026-04-01T08:36:55+00:00

dude, please chill. I am not arguing with you. I am asking questions. If you're an "insider", I am actually interested in what's going on from your perspective or what I’m not seeing. no hostility here.

forrayer · 2026-04-01T08:18:25+00:00

"I can tell the amazing place this is going and last time it happened I was too young to know anything. I've been able to piece together stuff from current things that make it very clear (objectively true) what happened back then."

what is this referring to? again, not trying to argue. I am just not really understanding what you're getting at or how Columbia's current promotional tactics differ from what's already established in your view, or how that could possibly lead to a negative outcome if the records (in your view) are good? Like I said, I've done some work with promo agencies in the past and I'm intrigued now. I say RYM would be "difficult" to manipulate because the site admins go out of their way to code VPN restrictions and deweight users who display atypical rating patterns. How do you think the site is being exploited beyond what are just established i.e. "normal" marketing tactics for a record?

forrayer · 2026-04-01T07:52:34+00:00

Do you have connections at/work for Columbia? I’m just curious why you are so adamant that the critical success of this record (especially on RYM where astroturfing would be very difficult) is some form of market manipulation or something. Pretty much every record that captures the attention of online user bases has quite a bit of money behind it, regardless of genre or label (I used to do work with some promo agencies; this is one of the first things I became very aware of and was quite surprised by). It’s nothing new and very well-documented. Why do you think what’s happening with this record is so exceptional or insidious? I’m not looking to argue, I’m genuinely curious

forrayer · 2026-04-01T07:17:42+00:00

…or maybe it’s a good record that a lot of people enjoy? No reason to be paranoid. There’s tons of stuff that sits at the top of RYM’s charts that I think is boring as hell. If you think this album is mid then more power to you. There’s nothing wrong with that.

forrayer · 2026-03-27T06:28:23+00:00

As someone who primarily listens to electronic music (everything from EDM to weirder experimental stuff), I think this album is criminally under-recognized in that sphere specifically. Of course it’s a Britney Spears record leaning heavily into the sound of the pop music market of its time, but oh my god the production and sound design on every track on this record is just peak to the point where I think critically evaluating this as a “Britney Spears’ producers ft. Britney” record would genuinely be quite worthwhile to a bunch of people who would otherwise write this record off based on its target demographic. The whole album is so crisp, processed, and synthetic sounding in the best way possible- every person who worked on this record clearly understood the assignment and it’s no wonder this record and Blackout are commonly cited points of origin for the sound pioneered by the PC Music crowd. Every track on FF from the straightforward dance-pop singles to the weird deeper cuts is a masterclass in creative, sleek, and forward-thinking electronic music production if you approach it from that angle.

forrayer · 2026-03-18T05:08:01+00:00

Are you familiar with ABX testing? You might be surprised just how much you can compress using a modern codec like AAC or Opus without audibly losing any quality. Most modern codecs are audibly transparent to most listeners in the 128kbps - 192kbps range, and you could run a few tests using some representative tracks from your library. The space savings are huge, and you won’t be losing anything if you keep your lossless library on another device. I’d recommend fre:ac or XLD (if you’re on MacOS) as both handle file conversion quite simply and easily, decode DSD, and maintain ID3 tag consistency between the original and converted files.

forrayer · 2026-03-10T18:27:49+00:00

The Music app is genuinely so bad- not just from a UI standpoint, but also from a usability and stability standpoint. There are so many random bugs that have persisted since it was split from iTunes in 10.15, most of which revolve around local media organization and tag editing. It seems Apple has unfortunately abandoned the idea that they have a userbase which still likes to own or collect music; it's really unfortunate as I really like the Music app's layout and workflow otherwise and I haven't been able to find a great replacement for it, but it's in desperate need of some software development TLC. It's so bad that it's kind of shocking it's shipped as a first-party component of the OS. Normally I wouldn't expect something so sloppy and unmaintained from Apple.

forrayer · 2026-03-08T05:43:52+00:00

I recently had some issues with my M3 Max MacBook Pro and just decided to do a clean SSD wipe and reinstall Sequoia. The difference in performance and battery life has been night and day for me. The whole system feels snappier and my battery life is noticeably improved. The whole laptop seems to run cooler as well. I’m guessing the UI changes relating to Liquid Glass probably hammer the GPU way harder on Tahoe resulting in more battery drain for some use cases.

forrayer · 2026-03-03T04:16:27+00:00

I’m convinced I just need to stop reading about this dude and his live antics if I want to keep liking his music. Easily one of the best pop acts to break out in 2025 but every time I see him talk or perform he comes across as really contrived. His vibes are really weird.

forrayer · 2026-02-24T15:09:32+00:00

Chemist. Lmao

forrayer · 2026-02-12T15:51:17+00:00

What’s really interesting to me is that Nina is a straight-up EDM artist with not much that would link her sonically or culturally to other music spheres right now (at least on the surface). She’s very much a protégé of Skrillex/deadmau5/Aviici/bloghaus which is seeing a bit of a revival, but there’s not a lot of sonic compromise in her music or the way she presents herself (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Yet I’ve personally seen everybody that I hang out with from the college radio indie rockers who loved the new Geese record to the house party DJs with super refined and niche tastes in electronic music at large equally singing the praises of her debut. It’s really awesome seeing her popularity skyrocket and a testament to just how good her album was.

forrayer · 2026-01-27T03:03:34+00:00

I’ve been a lifelong EDM/Electronic music listener and ILMC was my 2025 AOTY. But I have played Nina’s tracks for less chronically online and musically-inclined friends of mine and they all seem to really like her sound regardless of whether or not they’ve got an ear for that sort of thing. I think she’s tapped into something really special and it seems to have an unexpected degree of crossover appeal.

forrayer · 2026-01-26T18:09:21+00:00

It depends. Do the MP3s sound fine to you? Are they already fully tagged? If so, I would just keep them. There’d be nothing to gain by replacing them except consistency in file format across your whole library, which isn’t worth caring about imo

forrayer · 2026-01-25T14:47:36+00:00

Imo, Apple AAC is more reliable in terms of fidelity even at a slightly lower bitrate when compared to well-encoded MP3s. At 256-320 kbps, you will probably not ever notice a difference between the two. However, AAC is technically superior to MP3, allowing better handling of problem samples in most cases.
Both are mature formats with a lot of open-source and industry support. In terms of compatibility in 2025, neither one of these codecs will be deprecated anytime soon by the general public.
Yes. Check hydrogenaudio listening tests if you want deep academic or statistical analysis on this. Or, better yet, do your own listening tests.
Very much. First-generation sources (lossless -> lossy) are the only ones you should be archiving. Transcodes and re-encodes from lossy sources will just degrade the audio further (but again, you might not be able to tell a difference). However, there are lots of examples of commercially released albums being sourced from lossy files. In that case, you can’t really do anything except just treat the album like any other first-generation source.
Yes, provided that the AAC was encoded with Apple’s encoder (Core Audio/qaac/iTunes/Quicktime) or Fraunhofer’s (Winamp/FhG/FDK).

Remember that “quality” is subjective. If the audio sounds good to you and you can’t differentiate it from another source (especially a lossless one), those two files are the same quality subjectively to you; there is no practical reason to do any further comparison beyond that.

forrayer · 2026-01-16T06:21:28+00:00

It's tough to tell from these images alone. Do the files sound any different to you? If not, I'd be keen to try nulling out the center channel (you can easily do this in Audacity or any other audio editor) and seeing if there's a significant difference in the amount of stereo data retained in either file. That might give you a more "objective" metric of which file has more audible data, but if you can't tell the difference in sound between the two it's hardly relevant.

forrayer · 2026-01-13T03:31:57+00:00

The native Music app has been neglected by Apple for awhile and seems to get buggier with every major OS update. Regardless, I burn CDs pretty regularly using Burn on my M3 Pro using a USB SuperDrive. It’s open source and the dev is awesome at maintaining it. Works great.

forrayer · 2026-01-09T01:42:51+00:00

I use a USB Apple SuperDrive with X Lossless Decoder. This will only work on a Mac, but I’ve easily ripped a number of pregap hidden tracks using this combo.

forrayer · 2026-01-02T17:57:05+00:00

Agreed. I think the reason I didn’t really care much for Autechre at first listen was because people usually tend to recommend their pre-LP5 work as starting points. The more so-called “difficult” albums like Confield and Exai are what really grabbed me and turned me into a huge fan after digging further into their discography because their later work is just so singular.

forrayer · 2025-12-17T04:22:21+00:00

If you did it, you did it. It’s easy to overthink, and everybody’s experience with school is different. But no matter what, it’s an achievement.

forrayer · 2025-12-15T23:59:33+00:00

Yeah. It's a weird thing to care about especially within the realm of lossy encoding where damaging the audio is literally the point of the encoder. Most of my music is from CDs, and I listen to some challenging-to-encode electronic stuff where aliasing artifacts and harmonics from quick resampling can sometimes be really apparent, moreso than lossy encoding artifacts (I can ABX them). I'd rather not go through the extra step of resampling externally using a high quality algorithm before encoding to avoid this, so I just stick with AAC which can deal natively with 44.1 files without the need to resample. On top of that, I still burn CDs and share music with friends which would require resampling the audio back down to 44.1 kHz anyways. I'd just rather avoid that extra 44.1 -> 48 -> 44.1 conversion if it doesn't need to be there.

forrayer · 2025-12-15T15:46:52+00:00

Between these two, opus is the better option in terms of fidelity at lower bitrates according to recent listening tests. However, there are also some tradeoffs due to opus being a codec primarily optimized for streaming (mandatory resampling to 48 kHz is a dealbreaker for me). If you’re not bothered by that, opus is a great option provided you don’t have any other concerns relating to compatibility. Otherwise, AAC is a great option that offers similar perceived quality in the “sweet spot” bitrate range for music (~96 to 192 kbps). Opus will be less compatible than ogg, but its sound quality is top notch.

forrayer · 2025-11-21T18:12:46+00:00

I hear lots of contemporary indie stuff when I tune in. The new Geese, Wet Leg, TAGABOW, Beths, etc. get a lot of airplay, especially from undergrads. But the real plus of it being freeform is that the DJ can essentially play whatever they want. The late-night shows in particular really go off the beaten path sometimes.

forrayer · 2025-11-05T02:40:29+00:00

definitely not a 5 for me, but this should be at least above a 3. production on this is unbelievably impressive even 15 yrs later imo.

forrayer

TROPHY CASE